EDITORIAL: The cold-blooded killer Alfonso Rodriguez evades his rightful sentence

Mar. 18—Alfonso Rodriguez, the cold-blooded murderer who has spent two decades fighting for his life,

earned a big win this week,

thanks to U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland.

Justice will not be served after all.

We all remember Rodriguez, the man who

in November 2003 abducted UND student Dru Sjodin

outside the Columbia Mall in Grand Forks, sexually assaulted her and brutally killed her in a rural area near Crookston. Sjodin's body wasn't found until April 2004.

At the time, Rodriguez was a registered sex offender.

In 2006, he was found guilty of kidnapping resulting in death and in 2007, he was sentenced to death. Although neither North Dakota nor Minnesota have state death penalties, Rodriguez triggered federal statutes when his crime stretched across state lines.

In the years since, Rodriguez has evaded death through legal appeals.

For example, his lawyers in 2019 sought to have the death penalty overturned based on what they said was Rodriguez's mental deficiency. Last year, a judge overturned the death penalty, saying a medical examiner at the trial gave "unreliable, misleading and inaccurate" testimony about how Sjodin died.

And now, earlier this week, Garland told the U.S. Attorney's Office in North Dakota to withdraw the government's pursuit of the death penalty.

"The directive to withdraw the death notice has changed how the United States Attorney's Office will proceed with this case," said Mac Schneider, North Dakota's U.S. attorney.

Let's not blame Schneider. He told Forum News Service that he was "very straightforwardly directed to withdraw the notice."

So now Rodriguez gets to live out his life — exactly what young Dru Sjodin didn't get on that November day back in 2003. She most certainly pleaded for her life, but the brutal killer did not show the same mercy that Garland is showing him.

North Dakota Attorney General Drew Wrigley — who was the state U.S. attorney in 2006 and led the prosecution of Rodriguez — isn't happy.

"Rodriguez will remain in prison for life, but the gates of death row will be opened, returning him to (the) general prison population where he will be allowed to construct a social existence and life for himself within the confines he found so comfortable across the decades he was previously imprisoned," Wrigley said in a statement this week. "This result is a grave affront to justice and to the hearts and souls of all who loved and cared for Dru Sjodin. They have our prayers for God's peace as do all who held out the hope there would be justice for that brave woman."

That Rodriguez is able to claim any sort of victory or feel joy after this ruling — as he most certainly is — is a stomach-churning example of misjustice.